The Pretty Face, the Funeral and Lex
by Nymph Du Pave
Summary: Slash: CLex. Sequel to 'What Are You Doing New Year's Eve'. Clark tries to save and overcome. Lex tries to live on. This starts out in a very different vien than WaYDNYE. Please, stick with it.
1. Clark: Events Change Reality

Author: Nymph Du Pave   
Title: The Pretty Face, The Funeral and Lex [Sequel to **What Are You Doing New Year's Eve**]   
Rating: PG-13 [currently]   
Pairing: CLex and maybe a few others   
Summary: Clark tries to overcome the past and save Lex. Lex tries to move on without the burden of love. Chloe and Pete act as backups respectively.   
Disclaimer: I don't own them but my muse forces me to abuse them.   
Feedback: PLEASE! I understand that it has been so long since I have posted [except for the recent two works] and that this is not one of the stories that some of you are looking for. That withstanding, I still beg.   
Email Address: nymph_du_pave@hotmail.com   
Note: This is an on-going work that I am posting on my Livejournal (**The Sun-Beaten Puddle**, ) as well. I post first there, then I post another chapter there and the previous one here. That way the Livejournal is always one chapter ahead and if the story ever turns NC-17, I can link there for chapters that I might skip. Also, the chapters are going to be fairly short. This is a little more artsy than my other stuff and might have some heavy angst. 

* * *

**The Pretty Face, The Funeral and Lex   
by Nymph Du Pave**

_"And I know things can't last forever. But there are lessons I will ne-ver learn."_   
**Pretty Baby**   
Vanessa Carlton   


**Clark: _Events Change Reality_**

"Somehow," she reads. "I don't know how, but we just fell apart. And that was it." 

God, I love the world when the sky is as black as a clean, glossy Lincoln and the atmosphere feels crisp, the night wind blowing through the crevices in my gelled hair. There is nothing that you want for in that moment. There is 'is'. There is 'now' but even that only lasts for as long as you can say the word, then it is gone, it passes and you cannot get it back again. You're in that moment and your heart remembers it for the times that you sit doing bills or washing dishes. Raking leaves, standing over a grave that was dug much to early. Remembering a pretty face that you thought lead you down the right path but instead only pulled you farther and farther away until one day, finally, you realize just what you're missing but that it might just be damned near impossible to get. 

I pull over into the empty HOV lane. It's one o'clock in the morning and even I-95 looks like a lonely desert road with the mirage of civilization all around. I let my foot add 15 miles to our speed and take a quick glance above me, at the moon, a white bloch on all that perfect ebony. A spot of bleach on an otherwise perfectly black tee shirt. 

The stars aren't shining and I pretty sure that means something ominous to someone out there but tonight I just don't give a God-damn. Driving this old convertible El Dorado is an instant of freedom that is solely mine. 

_Blurry_ plays on the radio and another sign passes overhead. Miami - South. It's about thirty more miles and then I'll be there. Be there to stop ten o'clock. Well, maybe I cannot stop the clocks themselves, but I can advert his attentions to other activities. Stop that beautiful misery that he loves so much from taking him over. That's why I'm driving, that's why I'm following. 

"That a savior at heart could not look upon them" Chloe reads allowed, letting her free hand - the one not holding my book, my works - out the window, flying up and down through the air, up and down. "And see something worth saving, that he could not pull one singular excuse to postpone their horrible executions from the minds that there were kept... Nay, that he longed to, instead of staying their bloody deaths, be the cause of their nullified existances... This would be, to the honest man, a frightening concept." 

I once again thought of the pretty face, the funeral and Lex. Things that confuse me. But I've realized that the more confused I am the more blissfully unaware of reality I am and the happier I tend to be.   
  
  
  
  
**Next: Shism**


	2. Lex: Shism

Author: Nymph Du Pave   
Title: The Pretty Face, The Funeral and Lex [Sequel to **What Are You Doing New Year's Eve**]   
Rating: PG-13 [currently]   
Email Address: nymph_du_pave@hotmail.com   
Note: This is an on-going work that I am posting on my Livejournal (**The Sun-Beaten Puddle**, ) as well. I post first there, then I post another chapter there and the previous one here. That way the Livejournal is always one chapter ahead and if the story ever turns NC-17, I can link there for chapters that I might skip. Also, the chapters are going to be fairly short. This is a little more artsy than my other stuff and might have some heavy angst. 

* * *

**The Pretty Face, The Funeral and Lex   
by Nymph Du Pave**

_"...with him on top...   
arms raised in a V   
dead lay in pools of maroon below... _

...daddy didn't give attention... 

...pickin' on the boy   
seemed a harmless little fuck   
but we unleashed a lion... 

...daddy didn't give affection   
and the boy was something mommy wouldn't wear   
king Jeremy the wicked   
ruled his world..."   
**Jeremy**   
Pearl Jam, paraphrased   


**Lex: Shism**

I stand on the terrace of my new Ft. Lauderdale condo and watch as the ocean takes away a child's footprints from the sand. The tide is rising, a storm is coming and I feel cold, like the medallion. 

Cold at the beach. That's something someone I know would have laughed about. He feels like years ago to me. Forever ago. 

The salt air is as far as oblivion to me right now, and the breeze is not what chills me. I watch the ocean twinkle silver and gold, silver and gold in the setting sun. The beach, now deserted, looks more like a haven from one of my better dreams instead of the hotspot tourist location that it is. Alone in so many ways, not tied down for the next few hours to business meetings, limo rides, parties or conversations with my accountant, I am free. 

"Free," I whisper with no real emotional content because I can't really feel anymore. I'm sure that once it would have truly upset me that freedom means nothing, is just a word, a toy, something that I never really have. Because I can't just pick up and leave. I can't stop the storm from coming, no matter where I am, or what I'm doing and I cannot keep this chill away. So what is freedom? It's merely a dream and, as Lex Luthor, I've got no time for dreams. I am the world's leading businessman now that I have stomped all over my father and his creations. Reduced him to a pile of pathetic, pleading mush on the floor. 

And this is what equals my life sometimes. 

It turn around, see the chocolate bar on top of my suitcase. Damn thing is what started all this inner thought anyway. I should really pick it up and throw it off the terrace, into the sand. Maybe if I throw it far enough, the ocean could take it away. 

I do pick it up, but I know it will never make it's way down the 33 floors. I run my finger over the plastic wrapper. A _Clark Bar_. I don't need to muse on just how the thing got here. I know. And I will have to find away to let Mr. Ross know that there are things that are off limits, even to him. 

Still... Sometimes I'm sure that I can feel him, Clark, my old best friend. Through the facade of life as a terribly important business man, off to real life, entering the empty domain of my bedrooms at night, somewhere that I can no longer bring another person, the life around me falls and I shatter, every night, in my dreams. I often wonder if that's where we both really live, and this is just some terrible nightmare that I have wrapped myself in. 

I hope either way that it will someday end.   
  
  
  
  
Next: Crash and Burn 


	3. Pete: Crash and Burn

Author: Nymph Du Pave   
Title: The Pretty Face, The Funeral and Lex [Sequel to **What Are You Doing New Year's Eve**]   
Rating: PG-13 [currently]   
Email Address: nymph_du_pave@hotmail.com   
**This is an on-going work that I am posting on my Livejournal (**The Sun-Beaten Puddle**, ) as well. I post first there, then I post another chapter there and the previous one here. That way the Livejournal is always one chapter ahead and if the story ever turns NC-17, I can link there for chapters that I might skip. Also, the chapters are going to be fairly short. This is a little more artsy than my other stuff and might have some heavy angst.** 

* * *

**The Pretty Face, The Funeral and Lex   
by Nymph Du Pave**

_i have not been home since you left long ago   
i'm thumbing my way back to heaven   
counting steps, walking backwards on the road   
i'm counting my way back to heaven   
i can't be free with what's locked inside of me   
if there was a key, you took it in your hand   
there's no wrong or right, but i'm sure there's good and bad   
the questions linger overhead   
no matter how cold the winter, there's a springtime ahead   
i'm thumbing my way back to heaven   
i wish that i could hold you   
i wish that i had   
thinking 'bout heaven   
i let go of a rope, thinking that's what held me back   
and in time i've realized, it's now wrapped around my neck   
i can't see what's next, from this lonely overpass   
hang my head and count my steps, as another car goes past   
all the rusted signs we ignore throughout our lives   
choosing the shiny ones instead   
i turned my back, now there's no turning back   
no matter how cold the winter, there's a springtime ahead   
i smile, but who am i kidding?   
i'm just walking the miles, every once in a while i'll get a ride   
i'm thumbing my way back to heaven   
thumbing my way back to heaven   
i'm thumbing my way back to heaven..._   
**Thumbing My Way**   
Pearl Jam   


**Pete: Crash and Burn**

Polar opposites. They don't just attract, they lock in on each other, accelerate with incredible speeds in the same direction, towards each other. They rush by without a care in the world, with no observation of their surroundings, with no foresight, no thought as to the future. Their need is in the instant, in the now and no matter what, that will never change. It is the force of nature, the will of the Gods and the Birds and the Ground and the Leaves that the stronger the opposite, the stronger the magnetism. The stronger the opposite the harder it is to ignore that pull, to fight where you feel you are supposed to be. 

The harder it is to realize just when to stop. 

It's a simple theory, really. Crash and burn. And the sky is the limit. The most simplistic things increase the chaos. Oxygen feeds the flame, and so grows the fire. 

I walk through the corridors, the white static of my walkie-talkie turned low, the volume of my ear piece on high. I adjust my suit out of reflex. I know I won't see her for about another day, but it is still there, the need to look good. I am not used to this, haven't had to deal with my self-conscious self since high-school. The sudden ding to my confidence is ridiculous. I was a Marine, for God's sake. A woman should not have the power to reduce me to the lusty-eyed little niglet that I was. 

Polar opposites. 

Not that it was my color that turned her pretty face, but I always felt, growing up in Smallminded-ville and dealing with a fair share of that cold rage - quiet, tongue-bitten racism - that had I been white, my life would have been much easier. Easier like Star-fucking-Quarterback with my pick of any girl and popularity out the ass. No anonymous hate letters. No hate literature left behind in my locker. No dark looks from kids spawned by the more prominent families or snide attitudes from idiot teachers. 

I unlock the door to the 33rd level staircase, temporarily off limits to anyone that I do not first approve. The door shuts behind me, locking automatically, and I begin to ascend the stairs. 

My self-pity was why I forced my own hand into the Marines. I wanted them to discpline me, to stop my little baby fucking whining. Oh, boo-hoo, I'm black. My family of which I don't even know their names were slaves. Whites are the enemy. Give me a hand out, give me respect, give me an Oscar. 

No. I fucking earn my own respect. Actions are actions. Words are meaningless. If I slit your throat, how are you going to talk yourself out of that one? Huh? No. Actions save your life. Not words. Being black, being white, being Hispanic... None of that matters. You turn hearts and minds with actions. Actions are the proof of content, words are just labels. 

"Approaching the hold," I say into my cuff and a moment later I am at the key pad. I enter the thirteen digit number that my client, a multi-billion dollar man, someone who is close to being worth one trillion US dollars, does not even know and the door opens. My men move aside and I walk to room number 33-408. I knock. "It's Ross, Mr. Luthor." 

I hear his reply and I enter, checking my watch. It was almost seven-thirty in the morning. "We need to move you to the DSL." 

He stretches under the heavy down covers. "What time is the conference, Pete?" 

"10 am. Tomorrow. You need to be in Miami by tonight."   
  
  
  
  
**Next: Herculean Effort**


End file.
